What's your position on this fad of appliances needing networking and whatnot other connections? Especially in the light of other devices (like routers) usually running something that used to be free software 'til the appliance maker got their hands onto it. It is likely that some if not many or even the majority of IoT appliances will run (allegedly) free software in one way or another, and most likely without any regard of the underlying licensing model.

Would you rather see it as a vehicle for OSS to move into everyone's home and literally become a household thing, or is it just yet another abuse of free software by makers of appliances who just like to cut corners?

Sorry, clicked the wrong article. Someone mod the parent of this one (also by me) offtopic if you have some modpoints to spare. Thanks.

When has this happened? I couldn't think of a single instance right now.

Well, technically, RMS has more similarities with Santa...

I shudder at the thought. Imagine people with lower coding skills who resort to cargo cult programming thinking that hey, after all, it's from the biggest OS in the world, it can't be bad code!

Won't fly. Despite all efforts to make smartphones anything BUT a phone, they still are. And hence you still need a carrier.

And carriers won't really enjoy the idea of NOT being able to lock you down to their contract.

Uh, do we have any REAL questions?

That's where pathogens are superior to us. They neither have politics nor religion.

We are primarily a government contractor, and our main contract had a Siebel-based client management system (only a government would have the combination of money and stupidity to invest in an ancient technology like that, but oh well), and up until late last year, we had to run IE in the lowest security mode and IE7 compatibility mode just to make the ActiveX components function. The new version is by and large HTML5 compatible, and though they recommend Firefox, we've had only a few bumps running Chrome. I doubt more than a handful of our staff even use IE now.

Go ahead, I don't mind it. Hey, whatever floats your boat, who am I to judge someone's preferences?

But I'm also not insensitive to people not wanting others ogling them. I have to admit it would make me uneasy if someone kept staring at me. Not even in a sexual way, just staring. I do not like attention too much and I prefer not to be the center of it.

I guess not minding being ogled is something only really existing in natural exhibitionists and people who'd rather get paid to put some clothes on than to take them off and hence never experienced it first hand.

Yes, well, we often hurt the ones we love.

About the only place I still see IE is on some web-based applications from the late 90s thru the mid-00s that were built using IE 5 and 6's very insecure ActiveX architecture. Up until last year, we were forced to use such software on one of our government contracts, and it literally meant viewing the site in Compatibility Mode with security settings cranked down to nothing. They finally updated the underlying Siebel engine to the HTML5 version, and after that everyone just seemed to go to Chrome. I suppose at that point where we start rolling out Win10 desktops, Edge might end up being used, but I have a feeling that MS has missed the bus here, and Chrome is king.

I think Firefox dealt it the mortal blow, and then Chrome finished the job.

I switch between English and Japanese keyboards every day. I don't find it a problem, I got used to it fairly quickly. The Japanese keyboard has a lot of differences to the UK one, like all the shift characters on the number row and most of the ones next to the enter key.

A friend of mine uses Caps Lock instead of shift, but he also types insanely fast. He sees it as inserting commands into the input stream, and claims it is faster for him.